SpaceX and two other companies can keep their court orders freezing unfair labor practice cases as they litigate their constitutional challenges to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal appeals court ruled in a case with regional implications for the agency.<\/p>\n
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said<\/a> Tuesday that being subjected to an unconstitutional administrative proceeding was an irreparable harm that justified preliminary injunctions halting NLRB cases.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Employers have made their case and should not have to choose between compliance and constitutionality,\u201d Judge Don Willett, a Trump appointee, wrote for the court. \u201cWhen an agency\u2019s structure violates the separation of powers, the harm is immediate\u2014and the remedy must be, too.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision seems to guarantee that companies in the Fifth Circuit\u2014which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi\u2014can get district courts to block unfair labor practice cases by filing constitutional lawsuits against the agency.<\/p>\n The appeals court panel\u2014which also included Judges Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, and Jacques Wiener, a George H.W. Bush appointee\u2014rejected the NLRB\u2019s challenge to injunctions won by the Elon Musk-run SpaceX<\/a>, an Energy Transfer LP subsidiary<\/a>, and public benefits corporation Findhelp<\/a>. <\/p>\n Trump-appointed district judges in Texas granted injunctions based on Fifth Circuit precedent<\/a> finding that Securities and Exchange Commission administrative law judges have unconstitutional removal protections to the companies\u2019 claims against NLRB ALJs. In the SpaceX case, the judge also held that the board members\u2019 job shields violated the Constitution.<\/p>\n Removal Protections<\/p>\n The Fifth Circuit found that the ALJ\u2019s safeguards are unconstitutional, and the members\u2019 shields are likely unconstitutional.<\/p>\n Members\u2019 for-cause firing shields aren\u2019t constitutional under the US Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Humphrey\u2019s Executor v. US<\/a>, a 90-year-old precedent that has long supported the restrictions Congress imposed on the president\u2019s power to dismiss independent agency officials, the appeals court said.<\/p>\n NLRB members wield substantial executive power, bringing them outside of the scope of Humphrey\u2019s Executor, which had endorsed removal protections for Federal Trade Commission members, the court said. <\/p>\n The Fifth Circuit also pointed to the high court\u2019s recent decision<\/a> staying a district court\u2019s order to reinstate<\/a> Gwynne Wilcox, who was fired<\/a> by President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration. <\/p>\n \u201cAdmittedly, the merits question for Board Members\u2019 removal protections is a closer call than for ALJs,\u201d the court said. \u201cBut both the Supreme Court and this circuit have declined to extend Humphrey\u2019s Executor to agencies that are not a \u2018mirror image\u2019 of the FTC.\u201d<\/p>\n SpaceX is represented by Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. Energy Transfer is represented by Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP. Findhelp is represented by Jackson Lewis PC. The NLRB is represented by agency attorneys.<\/p>\n The cases are Space Exploration Technologies v. NLRB<\/a>, 5th Cir., No. 24-50627, 8\/19\/25, Energy Transfer LP v. NLRB<\/a>, 5th Cir., No. 24-40533, 8\/19\/25, and Aunt Bertha v. NLRB<\/a>, 5th Cir., No. 24-10855, 8\/19\/25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX and two other companies can keep their court orders freezing unfair labor practice cases as they litigate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[64290,64292,79,64291,64294,193,64293],"class_list":["post-94904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-judicial-appointments-and-nominations","tag-preliminary-injunctions","tag-science","tag-securities-violations","tag-separation-of-powers","tag-space","tag-unfair-labor-practices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}